


In Hushed Whispers

by rubihowl



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, F/M, In Hushed Whispers, and demons, but not too angsty I don't think?, references to violence and death, with some Solavellan tacked on
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-01
Updated: 2020-08-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:35:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25648924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rubihowl/pseuds/rubihowl
Summary: It was a horror.Usually, when faced with a threat, the consequences of failure are abstract, left to the imagination.Experiencing it is something else.[Orari Lavellan's POV of In Hushed Whispers, with some Solavellan to go with it]
Relationships: Female Lavellan/Solas
Kudos: 12





	In Hushed Whispers

**Author's Note:**

> In Hushed Whispers, from my Lavellan's POV. You can read Solas' POV of these same events [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25648699).

It was a horror.

Usually, when faced with a threat, the consequences of failure are abstract, left to the imagination.

Experiencing it is something else. I could hardly process it as real, everything was so far removed from the world I had known.

Dorian was all bravado, as seemed to be his wont, but I found myself touched by the way he promised to protect me. Perhaps a good man was trapped inside this Tevene.

I was thankful for his presence as we stumbled through the dilapidated halls. I did not have Leliana’s familiarity with Redcliffe castle, but I felt confident it had not looked thusly when we’d been pulled into that rift: the darkness, the haze, the red lyrium, all pervasive. My skin itched and my eyes burned. My throat felt parched, sticking together when I swallowed. The very air choked with pestilence.

Dorian thought we could get back, somehow, if we had the amulet. I let myself believe him. I could not accept the world before us.

We found Grand Enchanter Fiona first, her body half-metamorphosed into red lyrium. Her rasping voice warned us away, offered us what little it could, as she begged us to undo this monstrosity.

Blackwall was next. A hale man, he seemed to have weathered the abuse as well as possible, but said little otherwise, keeping his eyes aimed at my knees.

I was not prepared when we found Solas.

I heard his voice first, steady as always, calling out to the sound of our steps interrupting the standing water.

“Is someone there?”

I followed his voice intently, Dorian close behind, Blackwall watching our backs. I saw Solas’ lean form standing calmly, almost placidly in the cell, and foolishly felt relief to see him well.

His gaze met mine.

He was not well.

A red glow peered at me from his pupils, the pestilence in the air having found form hovering over his eyes. Something inside me rent itself to pieces, shredding at the _wrongness_ of it, this veil over his intelligent gaze, questioning the sight of me with the barest movement of his eyelids. This man I regarded as a confidante, whose presence I yearned for in quiet moments, had been made into something that should not be.

He stepped forward, his fingers winding around the bars; my heart trembled to see that he seemed accustomed to the motion. Tender pain pulled his brows together as he considered me, a familiar expression made wrong by the flickering red miasma that cloaked it. A fire ate into my windpipe; I had to free him.

I brushed his hand as I made to unlock his cell, and his face morphed into disbelief.

“You’re alive?”

“Yes,” I promised quietly.

His eyes locked onto mine. “We saw you die!”

“The spell Alexius cast displaced us in time,” Dorian explained. “We just got here, so to speak.”

Solas’ eyes had not moved from mine; he focused on me with a single-minded intensity I didn’t understand, subtly frenetic. “Can you reverse the process? You could return and obviate the events of the last year. It may not be too late…”

“I’m glad you understand what he just said, because I’m not sure I did,” I confessed.

“You would think such understanding would stop me from making such terrible mistakes,” Solas murmured, staring into me; through me. “You would be wrong.”

I had no idea what that meant, but I had begun lifting my hand to comfort him when he continued. Solas outlined the downfall of this world; only a year had passed, it seemed, but much had happened. Assassinations in Orlais, a demon army rolling over Thedas; if I had wondered how a man as clever, as gifted as Solas had been subjugated and forced into a mean cell, the answer seemed to be overwhelming force. His voice was steady, rhythmic, but it did not cover the twitching, trembling quality of his every movement, the fluid grace I had so admired reduced to a halting syncopation.

I placed my hand on his shoulder, unconsciously trying to still him. “We’re going to go back, Solas, or die trying.”

“If there is any hope, any way to save them… My life is yours.” Solas’ eyes pled with me to hear him, a tremor underneath his tone, the lilac of his irises clear to me behind the red shadow.

“Solas, I—”

“This world is an abomination. It must never come to pass.”

The possibility of seeing this world undone bolstered him; that he believed it possible bolstered me.

As we freed Leliana and sought to infiltrate the throne room, my eyes kept wandering back to him, to the sharp way he moved in battle. His easy agility had been replaced by a cutting edge that would have made me fear him were I not already wrapped up in fearing for him. We acquired the final components to unlock the door, and as Blackwall and Dorian led the way, I slowed and gently caught Solas’ wrist.

“I will see this undone, Solas. All of it. This will never happen to you, if I have to trade my life to stop it.”

He turned to me, surprising me as his palm gently pressed to mine, warm and firm. He squeezed my hand, and my chest contracted in tandem.

“I know, lethallan,” he said. “And I will do everything in my power to give you that chance.”

And so it was that not an hour later, when the demons bore down upon us, Solas and Blackwall and Leliana went to their deaths before my eyes, to protect my escape. It seemed impossible that any demon could have slain Solas, my mysterious mage so full of cleverness and quiet power, yet one dragged his limp body into the room, oddly peaceful despite the angle of his limbs. The creature dropped his corpse as though he were worthless, and a rage took me such that I had not felt in years, my blood scorching my limbs for the death I would rain upon every living thing that had brought me to this moment.

Dorian stopped me from letting their sacrifice be in vain, kept me in place to send us back through the rift. It was a near thing.

As we arrived back in the court of Redcliffe castle, a bout of nausea took my stomach. It was as though that future had never happened. It hadn’t.

And yet it had.

I rounded on Alexius, my limbs thrumming with adrenaline, prepared to burn him alive for the sins he had brought into the world.

I saw Solas in the corner of my eye, hale and unharmed, relief coloring his features at my appearance. I drew in a deep breath; I was still. I was in control. No one had to die.

Yet.

Alexius surrendered immediately. The Ferelden Monarch arrived. I invited the mages to join the Inquisition.

I barely recall any of this, for my mind was filled with the buzzing fury of vengeance. This Elder One, whoever he was… he would suffer.

On the way back to Haven with the mages in tow, we halted our forces to camp for the evening, still a day’s march away from our destination. Ordinarily I volunteered to pitch tents, start fires, clean armor, whatever was needful. No agent of a cause is above any task necessary for the success of its people, after all.

But that day I stood away some distance, at the treeline, studying the Breach with narrowed eyes.

“Herald,” Solas announced himself.

I didn’t look at him. I couldn’t risk seeing a red haze in his eyes.

He asked me if I was sure I had been to some future; I assured him I knew the difference between reality and the Fade. He warned me to prepare myself for the Elder One, whose plans I had interrupted. I did not reply that I would see him dead by any means for what he had done to people I loved.

I loved them, I realized. The Inquisition. I did not belong here any more than I had in my Clan, and yet I loved these people and their wild optimism.

And I loved…

Solas had been watching my profile study the Breach, allowing me to avoid his gaze, but at that moment he moved to stand before me.

“Lethallan,” he said quietly.

Hesitantly, I allowed my eyes to find his face. No red, no corruption; only the grey eyes I was so fond of, almost blue that day to reflect the clear sky above. His cheeks were tinged a healthy pink, his skin clear but for a smattering of light freckles. The only flaw was the scar above his brow, long healed, and not inflicted by any would-be god so far as I knew. I longed to feel it under my fingertips, to trace the contours of his face and know he was alive and well.

“Lethallin,” I replied.

“I understand the future you saw was disturbing.” He paused, gauging my reaction. “Is it troubling you now?”

“I saw you there. You were… not well.” I swallowed. “And you… pledged me your life, to undo what had been done to you.”

“A pledge wisely given. You succeeded.”

“Not yet, I haven’t,” I replied grimly. “But I will.”

“I am relieved to hear it. You make few statements of such certainty; I am pleased this is one.” He inclined his head. “Though you’ve not expressed such surety before now.”

His eyes were curious. I pulled air into my lungs, bracing myself.

“I saw what happens if we fail. And… I watched you die, Solas.” I wanted to look away, but his gaze held mine, watching me blink back tears. “You died for me, and I _saw_ your body, lifeless on the floor, and I would have done anything, anything at all, to burn that world to the ground.”

I rubbed at my eyes with the heel of my hand, trying not to feel humiliated at the tears there. “I love this world, these people, this ridiculous Inquisition. If the Elder One wants to kill any of you, he will have to go through _me.”_

Solas smiled at me, gentleness and light. “If you are not already his greatest fear, you will be.”

“Do you think a god would fear me?” I managed half a laugh.

“I think any god should fear to cross you, lethallan. The fire inside you is unlike any other in this world.”

My breath retreated into my lungs.

“You died for me,” I repeated in a whisper.

In one fluid motion, his hand reached out and rested feather-light on my cheek. I blinked in shock; my heart hammered, fluttering inside me, the angry heat in my blood changing.

“And I would again, lethallan, if it meant undoing terrible mistakes.”

_Terrible mistakes._

Those same words.

His hand withdrew, and he gestured to the camp. “But there is no need for any sacrifices today, save those required for the evening meal. Join me?”

I nodded with half a smile, following him back to a semi-private fire. I had thought the future Solas had referred to something that had happened during the year that wasn’t as his terrible mistake, yet he was dwelling on it here, in this time. There was something he would not say.

I should not have trusted him, and knew it.

Yet when I thought of his hand on my cheek, pledging to give up his life again, I could not help but take him into my heart.


End file.
